Wednesday, 23 December 2015

A Lower East Side Christmas

She was my first IAP
(Irish-American Princess). Well the first that I lived with at any rate. Tara
had somehow made her way down to the Lower East Side from the leafy,
lace-curtain environs of Westchester, although she was anything but stuck up.

Back then I had a regular Sunday
gig in the less than ritzy Archway up the Bronx and she fit in there like a
fist in a glove. Of course, she was quite a looker so that didn’t hurt with the
lovesick Paddies.

She had beautiful grayish green
eyes that would mist over in any kind of conflict or passion; there was much of
both in our relationship. The boys said that she could twist me around her
little finger. They were right, but oh that twisting could be so sweet.

Things came easy to Tara. She had
succeeded at everything she’d turned her hand to. But she wished to become a
successful singer, the rock that many have foundered upon.

I must have seemed like a good step
up the ladder; along with gigs in the Archway and John’s Flynn’s Village Pub, I
regularly strutted my stuff at CBGB’s and Max’s Kansas City.

It was to be a match made in
purgatory for both of us. Whatever, as they say, I was in need of some
stability and moved into her apartment on First Avenue.

I always seemed to have “just
missed” her parents on their visits to the city. That should have set the bells
ringing but I guess when you’re in love…

Actually, our first major
disagreement was over my parents - when I announced I’d be spending Christmas
with them in Wexford.

“Our first Christmas together?” She
shuddered.

“Well, you can come too.” Although
I broke into a cold sweat at the thought of telling the Mammy that we’d be
bunking together in the ancestral homestead.

“I couldn’t desert my parents,” she
countered as though I was sentencing her whole white-picket-fenced clan to
twenty out on Rykers.

“But what about my parents?” I
countered. And on it went as lovers’ quarrels do until her eyes were so misty
and beautiful I feared that her heart might indeed break.

Well, I wrote my mother a
particularly tear-stained letter full of half-truths (God rest her soul, I
suppose she knows the full story now). I didn’t dare telephone; I wasn’t man
enough to bear two loads of womanly angst.

In truth though, the part that
really hurt was that I would miss the traditional Wexford boys’ night out on
Christmas Eve. And so I extracted a promise from Tara that we’d at least tie on
a decent substitute.

“No problem,” she said and was good
to her word. She was fairly abstemious for those times but, when called upon,
could drink like a fish with little ill effect.

We bought a tree, decorated it, and
strung flashing lights all around the apartment. I almost felt like Jimmy
Stewart in It’s a Wonderful Life.Almost! For around 7pm I slipped on my
black leather jacket, she dressed up to the nines and off we strutted up First
Avenue to get well and truly shellacked.

God knows how many bars we hit, I
certainly don’t; but I was feeling no pain by the time we reached Max’s Kansas
City. Why Max’s on Christmas Eve? Well Tara liked to make the scene, besides I
knew the doorman and got in free.

I was also familiar with the
bartender who slid many the shot of watered-down whiskey towards us. And then,
through the shroud of smoky darkness, I heard the London accent.

“Roight!” The spiky-haired ghost in
black leather wearily exclaimed.

The platinum blonde next to him
droned on as junkies do.

“Roight.” Sid Vicious reiterated
whenever a response was expected.

I casually whispered his name to
Tara.

“Oh my God!” She shrieked as though
Jesus had just hopped down off the cross and offered to buy a round.

Sid looked up blearily, whereupon
Tara flashed him a smile that would have done justice to Marilyn Monroe on
steroids.

“The blonde looks like a piece of
all right,” I countered and winked at Nancy Spungen.

“From a bottle!” Tara sniffed just
as Sid laboriously hauled himself off his stool and stumbled towards the
restrooms; whereupon Ms. Spungen laid her head down on the counter for a wee
snooze.

We were still awaiting Sid’s return
when Tara looked at her watch and gasped. “It’s ten minutes to twelve.”

“Expecting to turn into a
pumpkin?”

“No,” she moaned, “we won’t get
into St. Patrick’s!”

“What for?”

“Midnight mass, of course. What do
you think?”

Was she kidding - from Max’s to
matins?

When we arrived at the church off
Avenue A, I could tell it wasn’t exactly what Ms. Westchester had in mind. For
one thing, the priests all wore shades and spoke Polish. Still, the place was
packed and we reverently stood in the transept in close proximity to an ornate
candelabra - wax dripping from its many branches.

Perhaps, it was the heat, though it
could have been Max’s watery whiskey; for one moment I was sweating and
swaying, the next I was writhing on the marble floor painfully disengaging
myself from a myriad of hot waxy candles. There was immediate uproar with many
Eastern European ladies screaming at me, and Tara, no doubt, wishing she was
safely home in leafy suburbia.

When I awoke on Christmas morning
much of her extensive wardrobe was laying atop me.She was modeling a matronly gray jacket and skirt, the hem
inches below her knees, damn near a foot down from its usual height.

I leaped from the bed and grabbed
my Doc Martens, pink shirt, and black leather tie and jacket.Unlike my dearest, I had long before
settled on an outfit appropriate for my first appearance in Westchester.

I did feel as though one of those
monsters from Alien was ready to hop
out of my stomach but I had much experience of that condition.“No, it’s okay. I want to do this for
you.”

She hemmed and hawed before
blurting out the truth, “It’s my mother…she wouldn’t like you.”

“What’s there not to like?”

“Well, your clothes, for one thing.
I mean, are you serious?”

And with that, the fight fled from
me. I could just picture the whole clan dressed in Kelly green singing Danny
Boy around a turf fire - her auld one, no doubt, peering out at me through lace
curtains.

Tara took me in her arms whispered
that I should go back to sleep, and hinted that on her return Santa might
provide some x-rated delights. But I wasn’t that easily mollified and delivered
one last parting shot as the door closed behind her, “So what am I supposed to
do, have Christmas dinner in an Indian restaurant?”

Well, I didn’t fall back asleep and
the hangover was of the galloping nature, gaining ground all afternoon. But the
hunger was no joke either and when I eventually sauntered up First Avenue the
only places open were of the Indian persuasion.

A dusting of snow was descending as
I stormed into The Taj Mahal. The lone customer didn’t even bother to look up
from his book; I sat there glaring at him, cursing all cruel-hearted IAPs and
wishing I was home with my Mammy in Wexford.

The snow was swirling around First
Avenue and White Christmas was leaking from doorways as I headed back to the
apartment. I turned on the blinking Christmas lights and took a couple of
fierce slugs of Jameson’s whiskey, turned the Clash up to eleven and rehearsed
ever more vicious and vengeful ways of breaking up with Ms. Westchester.

She must have forgotten her keys
for, at first, I didn’t hear her knock above Strummer’s bawling. I strode over
to the door, angrier than any Old Testament prophet. She stood there, face
flushed from the cold, snow in her hair; she was expecting my fury and accepted
it with grace. She smiled gently, her grayish green eyes misting over, and I
barely heard her murmur, “I missed you so much.”

She reached up, held a sprig of
mistletoe over my head and kissed me as if for the first time. And when she
whispered, “Merry Christmas, baby,” all the fight fled out of me and young love
in all its passion returned.

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